Peterl, welcome to Flyertalk! sorry that your first post is such a sad story.

... but what you experienced is absolutely standard procedure at SNCF and probably also at other European rail companies, nothing to do with Thalys. A suicide is not considered the railway's fault and therefore no compensation paid. These incidents happen, fortunately not too often, but I was more than once affected by this (not my train, but the line was blocked), it always resulted in a 3-4 hours delay at destination. Despite SNCF's advertised customer care, they don't offer assistance in case of missed connections other than looking up the next available possibility and letting you use another train with your non-changeable ticket. At some remote outstations they organize bus transfers to villages if you miss the last train, but nothing in Paris.